President of the Republic of Korea (RoK) Lee Myung-bak and his entourage left Hanoi on Oct. 22 to wrap up his official visit to Vietnam at the invitation of his counterpart Nguyen Minh Triet.

During the three-day visit, President Lee Myung-bak held talks with President Nguyen Minh Triet, paid a courtesy visit to Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh and met with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

During the talks, the two Presidents agreed to elevate the two countries’ “comprehensive partnership in the 21 st century” to a “strategic cooperative partnership.”

The two state leaders reached agreement to further increase visits by and meetings of high-ranking leaders and to establish a strategic dialogue mechanism at the level of deputy foreign minister to help deepen bilateral cooperation.

The two leaders pointed to the need to beef up bilateral cooperation not only in economics, trade, investment, and development cooperation, but also in science and technology, the environment, culture and education.

They have set out to raise two-way trade to 20 billion USD by 2015 along with further improving a balance of trade, and to consider the elevation of the project to develop areas along the Hong (Red) river banks into a national-scale project.

President Lee said the RoK Government has recognised Vietnam as a market economy and considered the country its key partner in development cooperation.

He attended and delivered speech at the Vietnam-RoK Business Forum, visited the Hanoi National University and met students who are studying Korean language and culture there.

The two countries on this occasion issued a joint statement on the establishment of strategic cooperative partnership./.